Many patients have injuries to only one leg or to only one side of their body, and the injured side can support less weight than the other. This leads to uneven gait, weight-bearing asymmetry and postural imbalance. Partial weight-bearing gait training is a method of training a patient to walk in which the weight of the patient is partially supported by a harness device, and the amount of weight relief provided by the device for the patient is gradually reduced as the patient learns to support his own full weight while walking.
The shoulders of person with normal gait may rotate as much as 15 degrees while walking. It would be useful to know how much weight is being supported on each side of the patient while walking, as well as the total weight is being supported by the device. With this information the patient can use biofeedback and learn to support himself while walking and the therapist can better determine which aspects of the gait need to be treated.
Although walking forward is important, moving forward while taking backward steps and side-stepping are important for real-life success too. There are partial-weight bearing gait training devices that reduce the weight the patient is supporting, with an overhead movable platform that travels across a track installed in the ceiling or with a portable wheeled device. These devices utilize a single overhead cable to support the patient and do not provide different amounts of support for each side of the patient's body, nor can they measure how much weight is being supported on each side.
Another gait training device is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,596,129, which shares some of the co-inventors of the present invention. This device provides a partial weight-bearing gait training device that can be moved to different locations within a therapy facility or even between facilities. It also provides different amounts of support to each side of the patient. Unfortunately, however, it does not determine how much weight is being supported in real time on each side. This is one object of the present invention.